High Anxiety

No, not the Mel Brooks movie of the same name but the kind of anxiety that grips you when you can’t find something you know is in the house.

I got the call on my cell at about 10:30 this morning as I was leaving Dunkin' Donuts after our morning tennis game. (No we don't play tennis at DD but going there for coffee afterward is a tradition). My wife was upset. She said she was frustrated. To my ear it sounded like panic. The problem was she couldn’t find our tickets for tomorrow's performance by Itzhak Perlman at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center (NJPAC). (Did she think I had them in my tennis shorts?)

Trying to be as reassuring as I could, I said I'm on my way home and I'll help you look for them. When I got home, I too, could not find them.

The tickets had been clipped to my wife's date book for three months. This morning, when she went to her desk to check the time of the performance the tickets were not there.

We looked everywhere we thought they logically could be. Nothing. Look, I said, when we least expect it and we're not looking for them they'll appear.* Meantime, we called our friend who had charged the tickets and told her what happened.

No problem. She called the PAC and they had no trouble printing duplicates for us to pick up at the box office. Problem solved, an uneasy serenity returned.

You guessed it. (See*). After dinner we're discussing shopping Monday. My wife picks up a discount coupon for a store she wants to visit and clipped to the back of the coupon are the missing tickets. We'll tell our friends in the morning.

We won't tell Itzhak. He should just play nicely.

Happy Shopping

Gadgets Gadgets
Everywhere and
not an app to think
It muddles the mind

Look Around

I can't stress enough the importance of looking around before leaving the house. In my case, looking down is almost more important.

You see we have white carpeting in our house. And ever since it was installed I don footwear solely (no pun intended) for use in the house. Thing is, sometimes I forget I have them on and leave the house wearing them. It's not tragic but it is annoying. Hence the looking down to make sure I have “outside shoes” on.

As for the looking around, that's to make sure you haven't left behind the things you wanted to take with you. Like the house keys. The book you want to return to the library. The bill you want to drop off at the Post Office (before it disappears altogether, the Post Office, not the bill).

Recently my wife left for her gym class only to ring the bell moments later to ask me to retrieve her water bottle which she left in the kitchen. I've done that, too.

Are any of these little annoyances life-threatening? Of course not. But they are preventable if we remember to look around before leaving the room or house.

I guess it's more applicable to persons of a certain age.

Is He Serious?

I started this year obsessing over purchasing a Blu-ray disc player in order to stream movies to my TV. By the time I finally bought one, the garbage being streamed sent me streaming out of Netflix. So now the Blu-ray sits idle.

Now I'm starting to obsess over whether I really need or want a tablet or a smart phone. I can't see owning both. Or either. Yet.

What put the bug in my mind was our scheduled trip to Israel in March to visit new great-grandchildren. The flights are long and boring. I can see value in a tablet for reading away the hours. I need to do serious research into the features of both devices. And their costs.

Of course, this new direction flies in the face of my year-long struggle to cope with the expanding reach of technology. Am I ready for this next step? We'll find out eventually but I promise not to bore you incessantly with my mental muddling.

Besides, after a year of blogging essentially about my battle with the new technology, in the New Year I intend to write on any subject that captures my attention. It's a leap year, giving us one more day to rant or rumble and it's an election year which makes everything and everyone fair game.

I'm looking forward to unleashing the Muddler. It'll be fun.

Trumping the Future

Email is a wonderful thing but sometimes it's just not fast enough.

For those of us still tethered to PC's getting 'the word” means sitting at the instrument and calling up your email. This evening I checked email rather late and discovered that we had a problem getting our tennis foursome together for a set on Friday.

Since none of us check email as often as I do, I did the retro thing. I called our members on the telephone and discovered we all could play on Saturday.

Now I have to find out if we can get a court on that day and at a time we prefer. THEN, I will revert to email and inform one and all.

It's good to be “ambitechxtrous,” able to muddle through the old and the modern world.

"Bumpers"

Introducing: “Bumpers, The Game.”

Object: interdicting persons walking in public with eyes glued to their hand-held device, oblivious to passersby. Players get one point for delivering a glancing blow, two points for “jolting,” and three points for a chest-on collision that actually gets the device addict to look at you. Four bonus points if they apologize for bumping into you.

Amass as many points as you like without getting arrested for assault. Compare with friends, reward the high point gatherer as you see fit. A light beer or a glass of wine, perhaps.

For the offenders: “Bumpers Protective Gear”

Protects the oblivious user of a hand-held device from injury. Comes in Unisex sizes for indoor and outdoor use. Features padded shoulders to ward off glancing blows, heavy-duty arm-length padding for “jolts,” and full-body padding when anticipating chesties (recommended for crowded conditions, such as texting, tweeting, etc. while strolling Fifth Avenue during the holiday season.)

Available at any store that sells infant wear, which is appropriate for conduct unbecoming an adult.

Be careful out there. We're watching you.

Tools Make the Man

You may be familiar with the old saying that a workman is only as good as his tools. I have primitive tools so I am a primitive workman. Which makes even the simplest task harder for me than, say, a person armed with the latest toolery (I think I just made up that word).

Today's tasks should have been easy. We're taking delivery on a new washer and dryer in the morning. In order to get them down to the basement I had to remove a shelf and two bannisters that might have been in the way.The shelf was easy. It just pulled out.

The bannisters were a different story. There were six screws on the upper bannister and six more plus four bolts on the lower bannister. The bannisters were installed for us by a friend who is a meticulous do-it-yourselfer. Meaning once they were installed you uninstalled them at your peril.

Hence dismantling the bannisters this evening became perilous for this primitive workman. The screws were in so tight I'm convinced my friend used power tools to install them. I had a variety of screwdrivers, one wrench and my own two hands. Plus my wife's assistance and encouragement.

This simple task, which we had saved for the last minute, turned out to be a lot tougher than we thought. But we got it done and I bumped my head only once, slightly, during the process.

We're expecting a contractor later in the week to begin work on the basement. He's younger and more skilled than me.

It should be easy for him to put up the down bannisters.